Day 1, Monday, June 30.
Mora, WA to Sequim, WA
Daily Mileage: 101 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6 hours
Average Speed: 15 mph
It was cold, gray and the crack of dawn as rolled I out of the tent and tried to ignore the aches that come from sleeping on the hard ground. Even so, I was excited to begin the trip that we had planned and talked about for so long now. We packed up the tent and drove the little ways down to the beach. After unloading our gear from the car and fitting it onto our bikes, we walked to the water—a rocky and rough beach—for a couple photos to prove that we actually were at the Pacific Ocean. Afterwards, Rob and Remus hopped in the car and drove away. This was one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever experienced—our friends leaving us stranded on a beach, thousands of miles from home, with only our bikes to get us back there. It was at this point that I realized we were actually going to have to bicycle clear across the country in order to get home.
Breakfast in the morning consisted of our remaining Pop Tarts purchased at the Wal*Mart in Wisconsin. We both ate them in near silence while sitting on a rock staring out at the gray ocean. David and I eventually suited up for our first day on the bikes and while it began a bit rainy, the clouds soon disappeared and the sky turned into a wonderful blue. We saw some beautiful scenery as we crossed back over the peninsula and had our first run-ins with huge logging trucks spewing bark chips. We didn’t eat much food today, either because we were too excited or because we didn’t yet know how many calories it would take each day to bike so many miles. For dinner we stopped at the 101 Diner before finding our campsite with the help of Ranger Bill. One of the nice things about rolling into camp on bicycles is that you can often get a location away from the cars and RVs—our spot this evening was in a nice wooded area overlooking part of the ocean.
(Left Photo: Tim and David on Rialto Beach/Pacific Ocean at the start of the bike trip; Right Photo: Tim with the bikes just prior to Remus & Rob’s departure.)
Daily Mileage: 101 miles
Daily Time on Bike: 6 hours
Average Speed: 15 mph
It was cold, gray and the crack of dawn as rolled I out of the tent and tried to ignore the aches that come from sleeping on the hard ground. Even so, I was excited to begin the trip that we had planned and talked about for so long now. We packed up the tent and drove the little ways down to the beach. After unloading our gear from the car and fitting it onto our bikes, we walked to the water—a rocky and rough beach—for a couple photos to prove that we actually were at the Pacific Ocean. Afterwards, Rob and Remus hopped in the car and drove away. This was one of the strangest feelings I’ve ever experienced—our friends leaving us stranded on a beach, thousands of miles from home, with only our bikes to get us back there. It was at this point that I realized we were actually going to have to bicycle clear across the country in order to get home.
Breakfast in the morning consisted of our remaining Pop Tarts purchased at the Wal*Mart in Wisconsin. We both ate them in near silence while sitting on a rock staring out at the gray ocean. David and I eventually suited up for our first day on the bikes and while it began a bit rainy, the clouds soon disappeared and the sky turned into a wonderful blue. We saw some beautiful scenery as we crossed back over the peninsula and had our first run-ins with huge logging trucks spewing bark chips. We didn’t eat much food today, either because we were too excited or because we didn’t yet know how many calories it would take each day to bike so many miles. For dinner we stopped at the 101 Diner before finding our campsite with the help of Ranger Bill. One of the nice things about rolling into camp on bicycles is that you can often get a location away from the cars and RVs—our spot this evening was in a nice wooded area overlooking part of the ocean.
(Left Photo: Tim and David on Rialto Beach/Pacific Ocean at the start of the bike trip; Right Photo: Tim with the bikes just prior to Remus & Rob’s departure.)
